City Government

Summer Reading: Experts Pick Their Favorite New York Books

Franz Kafka, the sometimes inscrutable Czech writer who chronicled man’s search
for worth and meaning, and Mickey Spillane, the tough detective writer whose
novels featured sultry blondes and bleeding bodies (often the sultry blonde
is the bleeding body) have little in common. Amid their many differences,
however, both men found inspiration in New York and wrote books that the
academics,
writers and others we asked cited as among their favorite works about the city.

MORE
NEW YORK READS

Summer
Reading Part I:
People who make their living from books pick the book they love about
the city where they live.

This week’s recommendations come from experts about the city and from artists who work in the city. Most of those who responded also told us what made their selection especially noteworthy. (Their comments are included.)

Interestingly many of the experts, including many who have written nonfiction works about New York, pointed to works of fiction or photography as their favorites. So, if you are heading out of town, whether to Jones Beach or the Kalahari, and want to bring a piece of New York with you, there’s
almost certainly something here to satisfy your taste. If not, look at our
choices from last week when people who work with books â€“ as booksellers, librarians and writers â€“ recommended their favorite volumes about the city.

FICTION

Andreas Killen, professor of history, City College of New York

Amerika
by Franz KafkaOne of my favorite books about New York is actually by someone who never visited it. The New York that Kafka creates is a place of wondrously tall buildings, elevators, speedy vehicles, businessmen sitting behind enormously large desks, slightly creepy characters, and mysterious, opaque events. It is an almost childlike vision of New York at the dawn of its emergence as the capital of the 20th century. Kafka's city is a purely imaginary construct, and precisely for that reason it captures something quite basic about New York, which is for so many people an imaginary construct before they ever visit it and even after they have come to know it quite well.

V. by Thomas PynchonI found V. on my father's bookshelf when I was a teenager. Before that, Manhattan to me was counting limousines and eating Italian ices from hollowed-out orange rinds. The characters in the Manhattan sections of V. are unstable, lacking strong connections to other people or any moral grounding. The depiction of money and job woes is bitingly true -- at least until one character lands a gig hunting alligators in the sewer.

A Hazard of New Fortunes by William Dean HowellsThis is a classic work of American literature from 1890. It begins with an extended search for a New York apartment, when Basil March moves from Boston to work in publishing. Of course, he ends up paying twice what he planned for half the features! This novel also shows the politics around early public transportation, which make our transit strikes look very tame by comparison.

Kiss Me, Deadly by Mickey SpillaneIn 1952, this became the first private-eye novel to make the New York Times best-seller list. Detective Mike Hammer wants to find out who totaled his car and nearly killed him. The men he encounters as he follows leads from borough to borough are quite unsavory, the women very savory, but all murderous. (Maybe if he had just taken the train. . . .) The 1955 adaptation of this book, though set in Los Angeles, is one of my favorite movies.

Leon Reid IV - Street artist, Brooklyn

Invisible Man by Ralph EllisonAnyone interested in New York City squatting, subway tunnel dwelling, and/or other traditions of establishment exploitation should take a close read into Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.
The book is a landmark not only for its bedrock truth regarding race relations
in the "cosmopolitan" New York of the 1950s, but also because of the language
with which Ellison allows the protagonist to describe his predicament,
slyly, without one mention of Mr. Invisible's identity. Haven't we all
wished at some
point to be transparent? Read Ralph's narrative as a testimony from someone
who was.

Winter’s
Tale by
Mark Helprin(One of our readers, Matthew Sholler, also endorses Winter’s
Tale: “If you're any kind of a fan of the magical realism genre that
many late 20th-century Latin American novels and shorter stories are known
for, then
this will be a treat. Set in New York City in the early 1900's, it's the
only book I've read that uses this approach to storytelling in a North American
context.
Helprin creates a wonderfully compelling protagonist in Peter Lake, a wily,
good-hearted thief who goes on an incredible journey following a chance encounter
with the
daughter of a wealthy newspaper publisher. In addition to its distinctive
characters, Winter's Tale contains
some of the most vivid and inspiring descriptions of New York City, giving
it a life of its own, a life that anyone who appreciates New York will recognize
and celebrate.”)

THE ART OF NEW YORK

Broken
Land, an anthology of Brooklyn poems edited by Julia Spicher Kasdorf and
Michael TyrellIt’s just very lovely, â€¦ very evocative and gives the reader a very powerful sense of the many faces of Brooklyn, the different characters of Brooklyn, the tension and dynamism and the beauty of the borough. Some of it is about neighborhood; some about emotional issues; some about political issues; one about the Brooklyn botanic garden. There are stories that are very personal and private and others that are the grander scheme of urban life. It’s a great treat. It’s
beautifully done.

Most of the reading about the city I’ve done in the recent past has been
about the birth of the Off Off Broadway theater movement in the 1960s and
there are three great books on my short list. Since, to me, Off Off Broadway
is a vital part of the city's history -- not only theatrical, but generally
-- these books are definitely books about New York, and good ones.

Old
New York In Early Photographs, 1853-1901: Prints from the Collection
of the New-York Historical Society by Mary Black
Neighborhood by neighborhood,
these extraordinary images freeze a city in constant flux: carters moving
goods to sailing ships on South Street; pushcarts, peddlers and shoppers
lining the sides of Mulberry Street; crowds on Fifth Avenue greeting Admiral
Dewey; bicyclists going past Grant's Tomb; the dizzying S-curve of the
Ninth Avenue elevated train at 110th street, running through virtual countryside.
That we have photographic images of all this and more seems miraculous.”

Tough Liberal by Richard KahlenbergThe biography of Albert Shanker of the United Federation of Teachers is the most important book I have read on New York and education in quite a while

Michael Miscione, historian

Forgotten New York by Kevin WalshThe
roadmap to a five-borough historical treasure hunt. Walsh has located,
cataloged and deciphered all the oddities and anachronisms that dot the
Gotham landscape.
You'll scratch your head no more over that curious statue or that mysterious
structure or that bizarre inscription.”

â€¦THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE

From
Welfare State to Real Estate: Regime Change in New York City, 1974 to the
Present by Kim MoodyThe juxtaposition of rags and riches is an old
story in New York City, but the divisions have never been sharper. While
thousands of black and Hispanic youths, spurred by a poverty rate twice the
country's,
line up for a handful of jobs at a Times Square store, the superrich are
busy snapping up $20 million condos. Kim Moody's compelling narrative of Gotham's
post fiscal crisis history offers an explanation of what produced this jagged
social topography. Economic elites and powerful mayors, operating in a municipal
environment transformed by globalization and 9/11, were able, he argues,
to
impose a neo-liberal agenda on the city. And subsidizing real estate and
corporate development, while rolling back social programs, in turn exacerbated
the income
gap. Moody's assessment â€“ comprehensive, cogent and rooted in solid research â€“ is essential reading for those seeking to understand the contemporary relationship between "progress" and
poverty.

The
Suburbanization of New York: Is the World’s Greatest City Becoming Just Another
Town? edited by Jerilou Hammett and Kingsley HammettWhat's next for New York?
Will it retain its edgy preeminence as global crucible, the place par excellence
where the world's peoples come to clash and fuse and create the future? Or
will the forces of suburbanization â€“ now sprawling and malling their way into town â€“ tame
the raucous metropolis, subdue its contrarian politics, make of it just another
outlet for Disneyfied culture, big-box commerce and franchise food? Perhaps
something altogether new is busy being born at the contested urban-suburban
frontier? Only
two things are sure: New York is in rapid motion, and this book is a great
guide to where it might be headed. Its diverse array of speculations -- written
by
some of the country's smartest (and wittiest) analysts and activists -- are
incisive and accessible, provocative and entertaining, perfect for an urban
studies course
and for anyone interesting in pondering the past and future of cities.

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